In July 2005, four city-parish councilmen will be traveling to Hawaii for a conference. It may be in the best interests of our community for all nine councilmen to attend this conference. Hawaii is one of several states with a statewide ban on billboards. Our councilmen won't see any Hawaiian city, town or village with the trashed likes of a Johnston Street or Highway 90, caused by billboards and business signs. Our councilmen will also discover that business and commerce are doing just fine in Hawaii, billboard ban and business sign restrictions notwithstanding.
We need monument signs in Lafayette. Moreover, businesses along the interstate need to start realizing that they can draw just as many motorists off the interstate with a $450 per year Highway Department logo sign, as they can with an elaborate 100-foot high business sign, costing $100,000 and more.
It is difficult to imagine a sufficient number of our elected officials having the vision and courage to do what is best for our community. We should permanently ban all future billboards. All new business signs should be low-standing monument signs. And we should adopt a phase-out plan for existing billboards and non-conforming business signs, with a mechanism to compensate billboard site owners via eminent domain.
If, by some miracle, we were able to deal effectively with our sign problem, perhaps city councilmen and women, from Hawaii and throughout the USA, will someday attend conferences in Lafayette, to study how our community resolved some of the most conspicuous impediments to Lafayette's urban smart growth and beautification.
JUNE 19 Here's another Washington Post blog post about a Louisiana politician, and it's just plain scathing. Ezra Klein says Jindal's Politico post was "insulting" to the intelligence of voters, and adds that Jindal is personifying the "stupid" he's railed against, by being an "elite" who convinces GOP activists of "things that aren't true." Me-ow.
JUNE 19 Here's Gov. Jindal's post in Politico, in which he asks the GOP to get over losing to Obama (again) and stop "the bedwetting." (Uh, what?) He gives his Republican buddies what is probably a nerd's idea of a coach's motivational talk, which starts with a list of accomplishments that they can't seem to exploit and ending with an absurd description of liberals that sounds like a character treatment for a Fox "News" movie scripted by Gordon Liddy. Sure, he's preaching to the choir, but even the choir's not this gullible.
JUNE 19 Lamar Parmentel read Gov. Jindal's post on Politico, but thinks it was so dumb it probably was published in the wrong paper. This post by Lamar on the Daily Kingfish opines that possibly Jindal's post was destined for the Onion -- because the governor couldn't possibly be serious here. If you listen closely, you can hear the staff of the Kingfish giggling.
JUNE 19 Blogger Ian McGibboney takes a look at the Gleason incident in this post. He makes a good argument about the difference between having free speech and being free from consequences for your speech (which none of us is). He also admits that many of us were upset before we listened to the skit -- but lets us know that the reality is far worse than we can imagine. It was the incredibly bad judgment, even more than the actual speech, that probably got those guys fired, he opines.
JUNE 19 Former Saint Steve Gleason, who is paralyzed by ALS, released a statement Tuesday in response to the Atlanta radio station's skit making fun of him and the disease, this Picayune post reports. What did he say? He said he'd accepted the apology of the DJs who did it, notes that at least the incident has got people talking about ALS, and asks anyone who is burning to take action about it to do so -- by helping him fight ALS.
JUNE 19 Blogger Robert Mann posts from Turkey, a country he has visited several times in the past few years. Mann gives an interesting overview of the current political and societal climate of the country, which -- if you're living under a rock and don't know -- is experiencing protests and turmoil these days. Mann promises to post as much as he can during his trip, which should be fascinating reading.
JUNE 19 Blogger CB Forgotston says the legislature is keeping the vicious cycle going with its funding of new buildings for the community college/technical college system. Universities across the state need maintenance and improvement on existing buildings, and the solution is to build new buildings at other schools? By the time the bonds are paid off, those buildings will be falling down, too, CB says.
JUNE 19 Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake writes about Sen. Guillory's switch to the GOP in this post. He writes what most political watchers in Louisiana know: Guillory was a Republican before he decided to run for the senate seat in a mostly-D St. Landry district, and has switched back now that he plans to run for Lt. Gov. in a mostly-R state. But how come Blake missed Guillory's appearance on a TLC pageant show? Now that is a video we'd like to see.
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